Long Odds and Small Chances
by moody bloom
Summary: (( Apologies to anyone who has received multiple notes about this being updated. I removed a chapter and somehow broke all my links! )) Collected short one-shots for the SWTOR 30 Day Character Challenge about Trin, Zabrak smuggler, who's real good with a blaster but honestly pretty oblivious about matters of the heart.
1. Introductions (Re: Our Mutual Friend)

Over in Tumblr land some of us have been responding to user starrypawz' 30 day challenge prompts. Here's mine for posterity.

All the fun stuff in SWTOR is not my circus, not my monkeys, etc etc. Reviews will be lovingly accepted.

(10/12: I edited the ship name because I was getting 'Electric Blue' stuck in my head every time I thought about it. And then I was thinking about Iva Davies' 80s mullet. Yeah, nah.)

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**1. Introductions**

Message-ID: TAT\596f726d6f20416c6df  
Recipient: RENDIAFR\Vn\df6a  
Sender: User 563, Jaka's Cantina Public Holoterminal  
Subject: Re: Re: Our mutual friend  
Attachments: [Video recording] [Still image 1]  
Audio transcript of video follows:

Hey, man. Here's all I could find out about our new courier friend.

First: word is she's fast, she's discreet. Just talked to the owner of this cantina down here. Says he asked for a shipment of Mon Calamari Special Sauce, 2150 bottles. You tried it? Rumour is the thing that makes it 'special' is a little extra_spicy_ kick, you know what I'm saying, and that's why it's banned in fifty-three systems in the Core alone. She got it from New Coral City to Mos Ila in three days, no sweat, not even a peep outta Empire's goons. Now he's selling those bottles for a hundred creds apiece.

Second, here's some of her backstory from around the holonet, you know, public record and all.

I got her full name as Trin Ai Kari. That's off her ship record anyway. Can't find any aliases.

'Bout four years ago she got kicked out of Republic Navy fighter school. Reason given on the record is repeated insubordination. Guess she's got a bit of a lip on her. Near top of her class, too.

Her ship's registration has her place of birth as Ta-Mireth Colony, Dorajan, in the mid rim. Never heard of it before. The colony's been gone for ten, twelve years now. Something to do with pirates, but I guess she made it off that rock before then. The ship's had a few modifications; there's nothing super obvious showing up on the service record. XS Freighter, if you're wondering. Called it _Seven Seeds._

Third, the records. No big ticket items on her record, just a few misdemeanours, one or two public drunkenness raps from her navy days, a few little stuff-ups on the spaceworthy checks. Had a word to my buddy on Nar Shaddaa and he reckons she's not on any of the shit lists he's got access to.

So that's about all I can find just from a quick look around. Not much but I guess that's gotta be a good thing, right? You gotta look real hard to find someone so inconspicuous. She works out, I'd say you got a keeper.

Anyway we'll have to catch up for that drink next time you're back on this dustball. Hope Ord Mantell's treating you right. Oh, here's one more thing — here's a photo she put on one of her freighter-for-hire ads on the holonet. Don't know if Zabrak chicks are your type or not, heheh.

Be seein' ya. Give 'em hell, big V.

"This message sent for _free_ from Jaka's Cantina Public Holoterminals. Fast, free, discreet holoterminals at Jaka's Cantina, _the_ home of Spicy Fried Granta on Tatooine."


	2. Chapter 2 is being renovated

This chapter has been temporarily removed so I can fix it because it was horrid.


	3. Personality (Ace of Coins)

Here's a shortie for part 3 of starrypawz on Tumblr's 30 day challenge was about your character's personality. I found this to be a real bugger to express as well, so I picked one key thing about Trin to focus on.

I own no part of Star Wars and anything in it; I promise not to leave sticky fingerprints. Reviews are welcomed with open arms. Please enjoy!

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**3. Personality**

It's the sixth round of betting and Darmas Pollaran takes a long swallow from his drink, his eyes never leaving the young freighter captain in front of him. "You're awfully composed for someone with so many credits in the pot, aren't you, my girl."

"Something like that." She, in return, doesn't break his gaze. He likes the way she looks at him that way, sort of closed-off and a little bit knowingly.

"Where did you learn how to do that, I wonder?"

She glances down at the eight of coins she's played to the centre ring, takes a breath, and then draws another. "Do what?"

"To make it seem like you care so little when the stakes are high."

D-N8 taps on the table. "Next bets, please," it says in its polite, quiet voice. The voice is a large part of what makes D-N his favourite. The other is a vague, unfounded, entirely unscientific sense that the droid is his lucky charm.

"Or perhaps you really _don't_ care," Darmas adds.

Trin gives him a half-smile. "Getting all deep and meaningful around the sabacc table, are we, Darmas?"

"Mere curiosity, my dear."

"I'd be pretty bad at my job if I couldn't keep a straight face, don't you think?"

"Next bets to proceed," D-N repeats.

"I'll raise twelve hundred," Trin tells it.

He almost laughs. "You're bluffing. But I'll match it."

"You seem real sure you're right about that, Darmas."

She doesn't really _seem_ like she's bluffing — years at the table have taught Darmas how to spot a kidder — but he knows sabacc, and he glances down at his cards; he now holds the mistress and nine of sabers for 22, and she's going to have a very hard time beating it. "You've been buying time for six rounds now, Trin. I don't think you can string this out much longer."

"You're probably right," she says evenly. "But let's just say I have a good feeling about this."

"Will you call the next round?" the droid asks.

He looks down at his cards again. "What's in the pot?"

"The main pot stands at nine thousand, six hundred and eighty credits, master. The sabacc pot stands at two thousand."

High enough to be more than social, then, and still there's nothing more informative in her body language even after hearing the amount. She must have had nothing worth a damn if she's going to draw a new card so late in the hand. Probably still doesn't, and now he can't wait to call her out on it. "Let's wind it up. I'll stand."

"Last bets?" D-N asks.

"Call it," Trin agrees.

"Then show your cards, please," the droid says, and Darmas places his mistress and nine face-up on the soft felt surface of the table. "Twenty-two from the host," D-N says, turning to Trin. "And to add to your eight?"

And then, she places down her two remaining cards: first the Idiot, worth nothing, then — he shouldn't be surprised, somehow — the ace of coins.

For twenty-three.

"Sabacc wins both pots," D-N says mildly.

Trin scoops up the contents of the pot, her smile broad and easy, now unguarded, and Darmas laughs. "You drew the ace in that last round, didn't you?"

"You know it." She leans back in her chair, hands tucked behind her head. A service droid is already there with fresh glasses, and Darmas takes one and toasts her with it. "Here's to you and that remarkably straight face of yours. I do hope you'll tell me one day how you came by it."

"Heh." She raises a glass back to him and downs the content. "You really want to hear it?"

"There are sabacc players who take years to learn how to stop giving away their tells," he says.

She looks at him carefully. "Took me a few years, too," she replies.


	4. Morals (The Line You'll Always Cross)

Here's part 4 from starrypawz' 30 day character challenge, and this time the prompt is on your character's morals. Except I also made it about getting drunk, haha.

There's no way I can make these daily, especially around Christmas time, but I'm determined to slog through. This one took me a couple of days to put together; accordingly, I had a bit more time to make it somewhat longer.

Many thanks to **Laryn Chillbreeze** and **clicketykeys** for the reviews and feedback for the previous parts! They are much loved and appreciated.

Insert pointless fan fiction disclaimer here! Of course I don't own anything.

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**4: Morals**

It takes a lot to distract Corso Riggs from his workbench, especially when he has one of his favourite blasters in thirty pieces in front of him. But when he hears the chime of the holoterminal, he's intrigued enough to listen in—no one's got the frequency for _Seven Seeds_ unless they've got business, or trouble, or maybe even both.

"Heeeey, C2."

"Good evening, Mistress Risha," the droid burbles. "How may I serve you?"

"We, um." Corso can make out some kind of background noise, like they're standing in a street. On the holo, Risha's abandoned her usual calm poise in favour of a slightly rumpled appearance. Is she even sober? He can't think of a time when he's ever seen her get drunk. "We need a ride. From the cantina. Can you come pick us up?"

"Is everything all right, Mistress?"

"It might be alright if this idiot would —" Risha begins, and suddenly she disappears, and there's some interference on the picture.

"What's going on there, C2?" Corso calls from the doorway.

"It appears that Mistress Risha has dropped her holocomm," says the droid, over a clattering sound from the holo. "I do hope she's alright."

"Blasted, stupid…" says Risha, but there's still no picture.

"Perhaps Mistress Risha may be inebriated," C2 says, helpfully.

"Let's just make sure they're okay," he replies, stepping into the holo's field of view; Trin appears, obviously having picked up the holocomm, to Corso's considerable relief. "Hey, Captain, what's happening?"

"Hi," she says, looking perhaps a little more sober, and definitely a whole lot more pissed off, than the flustered young mechanic. "So… we ran into a little trouble."

"Trouble?"

"Nothing bad. But, um, could you please grab a taxi, and come pick us up from the Silver Moon Cantina? We're kind of stuck here."

"There is a taxi pad fifty standard metres from the Silver Moon's address, Captain," C2 offers helpfully.

"Yeah, um. Thanks, buddy, but we… we can't catch a cab right now. I'll explain later."

Of course it'd be trouble, though thankfully it seems as if it's not the kind he was expecting to hear about. "I'll go," he tells the droid. "You mind the ship."

"Of course, Master Corso."

* * *

He's relieved to see that both women seem okay when he gets there, if a little fuzzy for the drink.

"So let's talk about why you can't let them onto the taxi."

"Under Senate District Ordnance 56/44a, section twelve, any taxipad service in the district may refuse services to anyone whose behaviour or appearance indicates an unacceptable risk of personal injury or damage to the vehicle." The taxicab marshal droid tilts its head towards a fuming Risha. "The floor manager at the Silver Moon Cantina has indicated that these two patrons were involved in an altercation and asked to leave by the cantina's security staff. Ejected patrons represent an eight point two five percent risk of causing damage in a taxi."

Corso grins and turns to face his wayward crewmates. "Let me get this straight. _You_ were kicked out of a cantina? For fighting?"

"I, um," Trin says, a decidedly sheepish expression on her face. "I did it. Don't blame Risha."

"And hardly a scratch on our fearless captain," Risha adds gleefully. "You should see the guy she hit."

"Judging by her current state of inebriation, I also calculate that the passenger to your left has a further twelve point six percent chance of soiling the cab's upholstery," the droid says, rather politely.

"_Soiling_ the—oh come _on_," Risha grouses. "They're _air_ taxis. I promise I'll lean over the side if I —"

"You won't be leaning over the side of anything in your state," Corso tells her, and turns back to the droid. "So, if they're too drunk to ride speeders and too drunk to take your cabs, then how am I supposed to get them back to our ship?"

"That information is not available," the droid chirps.

"Public transport?"

"That information is not available," it repeats, and Corso rolls his eyes at it.

"Great," Trin says, sourly. "At least you can bribe an organic."

"You sure can," Corso agrees, and for a minute he's still wondering about how they're going to get back to the ship—maybe he can holo Akaavi or Bowdaar from wherever they are on-planet and get one of them over here on a speeder bike, or maybe they'll all just have to wait till the two women sober up. But then it occurs to him that they're in the Senate district; there must be senators and their staff zipping all over the place, intoxicated or not, and _they'd_ never have to be subject to some ordnance or another. "You know, my friend is here working for Senator Dodonna. Don't you have some kind of, uh, government cab?"

"Oh! Why, you should have said so in the first place," the droid says. "A Senate Select service can be booked for a flat rate of two hundred and fifty credits per standard hour."

"Two _hundred_ and _fifty_ credits?" Risha spits in disbelief. "It's a thirty-credit fare."

"Yep. Well, I got the creds and I just don't care right now," Trin says. "So let's get out of here."

"My dispatcher unit indicates that the next Select Service cab is twenty-five seconds away," the droid says.

"You got twenty-five seconds to decide whether you're gonna hurl or not, your royal magnificence," Trin tells Risha, who's staring uncertainly into the middle distance, and then she turns to Corso and slugs him gently on the forearm. "Nice thinking, farmboy. Never even occurred to me."

"Um, thanks," he says, and he hopes he isn't too forward in putting a hand on her shoulder—friendly, like crewmates are, maybe.

The cab zips up to the pad and it's completely obvious right away that it's not the regular kind— glossy dark blue, fully enclosed, and nearly silent. "Welcome aboard Senate Select. Mind the step," the droid says, all of its previous reluctance to help completely forgotten.

"Yeah, thanks," Corso tells the droid, and they duck inside the cab: bench seats facing each other, even a little console in the middle you could use as a tabletop.

Risha's grin is luminous. "All right, this? This is nice."

"Sure is," Trin replies, settling herself into the back seat and taking a peek under the centre console. "Oh, look," she says, pointing to the open hatch—there's a little refrigerated storage unit with wine, individual flasks of Corellian ales, cold water, even towels and a little container of ice. "It's a teeny bar!"

"Guess we know where your two hundred fifty credits goes," Corso says, as the cab slips away from the pad and into the slow-moving trails of air traffic. "Your estimated time of arrival is fifteen minutes," the cab pronounces in a soothing voice.

This might actually be the most comfortable vehicle he's sat in, ever, Corso thinks. Risha is perched carefully on the seat opposite, legs crossed demurely, as perfectly at home as though she travels like this every day. Beside him the captain's making herself at home in a different way, reaching back into the little cold unit to pull things out.

"You sure about drinking more of that?"

"Believe it," Trin answers, passing him one of the flasks. "I'm getting my money's worth. Risha?"

Risha stares dreamily into the sky. "Nope."

"Prob'ly for the best." Trin grabs the bucket of ice, wraps her hand a few times in a towel, and plunges her left hand inside. "Oh, that's better," she sighs, reaching in for another ale.

"Why didn't you say you'd hurt yourself?"

"Didn't really think about it," she says.

"What was the fight about?"

Trin makes a face. "Do I have to?"

"Yup."

She sighs. "So, there was this guy. Human. Real gangster type. He came up to Risha and me, and he's doing the whole 'hey, ladies,' thing—"

"Ugh," Risha adds.

"—'Hey ladies, how's your night, what are you drinking,' y'know, all the classics. And we're both making it pretty clear, I _thought_, that we weren't all that interested."

"Yeah, you'd have _loved_ this guy, Corso," Risha says, still staring off into the distance.

"Well, he obviously didn't get the message," Trin continues, "'cause about half an hour later he came back for a second go, and this time he had his Twi'lek friend with him, and they're both laying it on real thick. 'Hey ladies, your night's about to improve, hurr hurr hurr.' And they tried to buy us drinks. We told them pretty clearly this time. Didn't take the hint." She pulls down a mouthful of ale.

"So that's when the fight started, right?"

"Oh, almost. What started it is when the human started saying stuff like, 'Don't you ladies know who this is? This guy, he's a real big wheel, he's rolling in credits,' and we're there saying 'yeah, uh huh.' And then I hear him say '…the Exchange's top slaverunner,' and then I kind of… got mad."

"And then she punched the Twi'lek guy in the face," Risha says.

"And then I punched the Twi'lek guy in the face," she echoes. "And then I had a swing at his human buddy."

"So much for keeping a low profile planetside, huh," Corso says, though a part of him can't help but smile at the image.

"Yep, well, not real sorry about that. Anyway, there's your story," Trin says, and she takes another mouthful of ale. "This stuff is real good. Drink up."

He does so—she's right, it _is_ really good. And it's kind of soothing, being able to watch the Coruscanti traffic drift by in near silence. They travel like that for a few minutes, Risha dozing off on the opposite seat, Trin fuming at the view out the window, with her hand still buried in the ice bucket.

Corso hardly ever sees the captain so mad. The last time he saw her like this was way back when they'd first met, back when Skavak made off with her ship. He wishes he could reach out and put his arms around her, or maybe turn the cab back around and go find those guys for a second round. But he settles instead for this: "How's your hand?"

She takes it out and looks carefully, then reaches out to show him. "Am I gonna live, Doc?"

"This'll sting in the morning," he says, brushing his thumb carefully over her puffy, livid knuckles. Nothing feels broken, but he's been in enough fistfights to know how they're going to bruise up, thick and purple. "Hope it was worth it."

"Worth it? It felt _great_. I wish I'd beaten the piss out of them," she says, quiet and hot. "You got anything you just can't compromise on?"

"Yeah," he says. "Doesn't everyone?"

"We've all had to do some bad things to get by or make things right," she says. "But there's no excuses for slavers. Not one. There's no good reasons for what they do, just greed or cruelty. Void take 'em all."

There's something about her when she gets like this. He's seen it in her face when they've blasted their way out of a firefight, or when she's piloting the _Seven Seeds_ through asteroid fields. It's a thing he can't quite make a name for, but it's beautiful and it lights her up from the inside and draws him in. He's still holding her hand, and he gently laces his fingers between hers—they're damp and cold from the ice, but somehow it's perfect just like this.

"Thanks for coming. I'm sorry to drag you out here," she says, looking down at their joined hands.

"Anything you want," he says, and he means it, and that's how they stay, all the way back to the spaceport.


	5. Alliances (Etched in Stone)

Part 5 of starrypawz' SWTOR Character Challenge is about why your character aligns to their chosen faction. This takes place a little while before the game starts.

There's been a big gap between this one and the last one due to being pretty busy during the silly season, but hopefully a bit of a summer holiday will mean I can get more of these churned out. Thanks heaps again to clicketykeys (who gave me a tumblr reblog, I nearly died!) and Laryn Chillbreeze for the much welcomed feedback.

Star Wars and all the beautiful shiny bits ain't mine, et cetera. I'm just mucking about. You know what _was _authorised, though? The Star Wars Holiday Special. There's actually no justice in this world. Merry Christmas, everyone!

* * *

**5. Alliances**

Early morning, and already the Mos Ila settlement bakes under Tatooine's suns.

Trin loves hot, dry weather. She loves being able to feel sunlight on her skin, and to wear looser, softer clothing. She loves the way Tatooine's cantinas and street food vendors favour light, refreshing foods over the typically heavy spacer chow you find in most other spaceports. She loves that its traders do business out in the open air, under colourful canopies, where you can sit and blow away a whole morning in the front table of your favourite cantina or tapcafe and watch the town go by. She's only booked hangar time for the _Seven Seeds_ through to the middle of the day, so she's got every intention of soaking up as much relaxation time as she can.

So when Jaka Xoth is late to meet her, she figures it's the perfect excuse to relax and order another pitcher of sweet bean tea. She's already delivered the cargo—in person, no less—to the droids hanging around the service entrance of Jaka's cantina. She knows he's good for the credits. What's the hurry?

Besides, across the way there's a chittering pair of Jawas unpacking a trolley and setting up a little stall to sell droid and speeder parts, and Trin's keen to see what they're pulling out. If there's a cheap set of CL-series repulsorlifts in there that would fit her broken-down old Ubrikkian Striker, she might finally be motivated to put the damn thing back together.

"Your tea, valued customer," a droid sing-songs, bringing the pitcher of tea. "And if I may also pass a message to you, mistress. Master Jaka sends his apologies and has asked me to tell you that he will be with you shortly."

"Well, thankyou, and you can tell Master Jaka I'm in no hurry," Trin replies.

Seems like the little market that's springing up in this street is mostly junk and parts, and one or two food stands. Curious shoppers are already starting to wander through, taking quick, practiced glances at the wares. An older human woman is roasting caffa right there in the open, tossing the beans in a wide pan and singing to herself as she does so. The Jawas are bickering about something or another that they've just hauled off their trolley.

And over there, coming down a set of stairs, is a group of five Imperial grunts wearing blaster rifles and full patrol uniform.

_Huh. How about that. _Mos Ila's had Imperials all over it for as long as she's been coming here—she had no problem paying off the usual guy to get through customs a bit quicker—but Trin doesn't remember it ever having such an obvious military presence. You'd see the occasional bunch of soldiers on R&R, sure, and maybe some administrative officers. There's always been a couple of armed peacekeepers in the spaceport.

Now she thinks of it, she's not sure whether she might have seen more soldiers at the spaceport, too…

"Trin! Trin_-le, i'nuin._"

Trin grins, and turns to face the speaker—there's only so many beings who can get away with calling her pet names like _little Trin_, and even fewer still who'll do it in her own language. Jaka Xoth stands a good forty centimetres taller than her, not to mention being considerably broader, and she's pleased to let herself be pulled into the Zabrak's big, warm hug. "Welcome back to Tatooine," he adds, kissing her firmly on the cheek to punctuate the point.

"It's been too long as usual, _i'pur nera'te_,"she replies—_handsome scoundrel—_and he grins back before pulling up a seat at the table. "Hope you don't mind me cluttering up the front of your fine establishment for a little while."

"On the contrary, little flame, you brighten it with your presence. I'm sorry for the delay," he says, offering a cigarra.

"I'm trying to give up."

"You are? Since when? It _must_ have been too long," he says, lighting the end of the smoke with a tiny plasma torch. He's barefoot, and wearing a short cloak with the hood up, putting his eyes in shade. _Maybe a hangover,_ she figures.

"I think last time I saw you was when you booked me to take that old automat back to Czerka's repair facility."

"That's right!" Jaka says, blowing out a stream of soft white smoke. "Why, it's been months already. Thank you for bringing the shipment. I knew if anyone could talk their way past the Mon Calamari export department it'd be you."

"Always got time for you, _nuin_."

Across the road, the Jawas have settled whatever argument they had before and are now chattering loudly over the partially disassembled shell of an astromech. Trin takes a quick glance to see whether any of those repulsor units have made an appearance. _Nope._

"Well, I appreciate the effort, nonetheless. This sauce is the hottest ingredient out there right now, you know, and the Mon Calamari hold onto it like stubborn rontos…"

As Jaka starts to explain the sudden rise in popularity of this Mon Calamari sauce—something to do with that famous Holonet chef Nai Jela, she gathers—Trin can't help but notice the little Imperial squad moving between the other stalls, one by one.

They don't seem to be shopping.

There's a Kiffar stall holder with a table full of under-armour garments, and one of the troopers is carefully, methodically, pulling every piece off the stall and throwing it carelessly onto the street.

The caffa-roasting human has stopped singing; she answers another trooper's questions with hushed, one-word answers.

A junk-selling droid emits a loud whistle of surprise as one of them works his way through the contents of a footlocker.

"Jaka," she says, "what's happening here?"

"Oh?" He looks over his shoulder. "Oh," he says again, more sourly. "They like to do these little routine _compliance_ inspections from time to time."

"Should we, ah…" Trin gestures towards the door leading into Jaka's cantina.

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere," he replies, cold as an asteroid.

A trooper has made his way to the pair of Jawas, who hiss their displeasure at him while he sorts through their collection of pieces. One gets too close and he swings at it with the butt of his blaster rifle, clipping the little Jawa across the head.

"Doesn't look like any safety inspection I've ever seen," Trin murmurs.

"It doesn't, does it." Jaka watches, too, his face a little pained.

The Jawa says something—Trin doesn't know their language, but it sounds angry—and the trooper tips over their hovertrolley. "Don't speak to me, vermin," he spits.

"I'd be careful with that," Jaka says, looking down at her hand—instinctively she's put it on the grip of her blaster. She takes it off, carefully, slowly.

The group's leader—a human, naturally—saunters over. "Jaka Xoth," he says. "I trust you're well this morning."

Jaka takes a long, slow drag on his cigarra. He doesn't stand up. "Sure."

The human glances just once at Trin, then back to Jaka. "Perhaps you've had a chance to give some thought to what we discussed yesterday."

"I've given it some."

The sergeant grins. There's red dust in his teeth. "I'll be stopping by tonight, bartender. Be sure to let me know if there's anything else we can do to help you make up your mind." He turns and walks off again, signaling his team to follow, and Jaka watches them go, exhaling a long stream of cigarra smoke in their wake.

"And what was all _that_ about?" Trin asks in disbelief.

Jaka stubs out his cigarra. "Well." He settles back into his chair. "That there was Sergeant Twill. He's one of five hundred new soldiers garrisoned here in Mos Ila."

She whistles. "Wow. I guess I _have_ seen a lot of troops."

"The Sergeant and some of his team came around last night, after I closed, for a little 'unscheduled inspection,' and to make me the _very_ generous offer to pay a simple fee of two thousand credits to _expedite_ any future inspections."

"He's _extorting_ you?"

"So I told the Sergeant that I thought that his offer was… not particularly well aligned with my business plan."

"What'd he have to say about that?"

"He said this," Jaka says, and pulls his hood far back enough to show her a fresh, nasty wound starting behind his left ear and curving all the way to the base of one of his horns, which is split. And she notices, now that his face is in full sunlight, that he also has a black eye and a swelling over his cheekbone. Someone has carefully, if sloppily, put the cut together with simple medical spray adhesive. No wonder he's been wearing the hood. She feels sick.

"Jaka…"

"It's alright," he says, carefully pulling the fabric back over his face. "There's nothing there that won't heal."

"It's not the point. Who do they think they are?"

"A heavily armed, very powerful military with a lot of ways to make our lives miserable." Jaka pours a glass of Trin's forgotten bean tea and downs it in one quick swallow. "Which is exactly what they are."

"It's not _right_, Jaka."

"It's not," he agrees, and lights another cigarra.

"So… you're going to do something about it, right?" she prompts.

He gives her a look. "What else should I do, _mireth-le_? Blasters at dawn? My fighting days are behind me now. Besides, I won't be paying him for long; I've already decided to close the cantina."

"_Close_ it?" she echoes, hardly believing it. Every spacer who comes this way knows that Jaka's cantina is a Mos Ila institution—stars, Jaka _himself_ is an institution.

"Oh, don't worry. I've been thinking about it for awhile. I guess you could say that regular business in this town hasn't been quite the same of late." He looks over at the stallholders, some of whom are carefully rearranging their wares, and some who are simply packing up and getting ready to leave. "That shipment you brought me isn't just for the omelette special, you know. There are collectors who'll pay a hundred, maybe more, for every bottle. I'm going to use the funds to open up again someplace new. Mos Entha, maybe, or Anchorhead."

Trin takes a long drink of the bean tea, now grown warm in the sunlight, and makes a face. "Do you want me to go and pay this guy a visit?"

"I really don't."

"But—"

"I know you want to help," he says, not unkindly. "But these men are not simple crooked corporals running a protection scam. The Empire either wants us to submit, or they want us to leave, and they will do this by making our lives difficult. And if we retaliate, then they will come up with something worse for all of us."

"What do they even _want _with Mos Ila?"

"I've heard rumours. Something to do with the old Czerka labs." He gestures at the tea. "I suppose that's almost completely warmed through by now. Why don't you come keep me company while I make us some more?"

The cantina's interior is cool and dark, all shiny plexisteel surfaces at the bar, and gray stones for the walls, and a comforting smell somewhere between leather and brandy. It won't see too many customers for another couple of hours; with no one to serve, the droids wander about the big main bar doing chores.

"Will you at least let me take a look at that cut on your head?" she asks, while Jaka makes himself busy. "Call it payment for the tea," she adds, when he opens his mouth to protest.

So while they wait for the tea to brew and then cool, she has him take a seat under the galley's brightest heat lamp and takes a good look at the damage. It looks like he's taken somebody's fist to his face and the butt of a blaster rifle to the side of his head. He winces, only a little, when she pulls away a layer of spraybandage for a closer examination.

"I'm surprised you don't have a screaming headache, Jaka."

"I've been in worse fights," he says, trying not to move his head too much.

"You're going to have a scar, too," she adds, flooding the cut with a thin stream of kolto. The cut crosses one of the marks of Jaka's clan; Trin is no traditionalist, but she still mouths a silent curse for the Imperial sergeant who's dishonoured it. "This Sergeant Twill deserves a kick in the ass," she says.

"Promise me you won't go do something stupid, Trin."

She makes a little _tsk_. "All right."

But it isn't all right, and it pisses her off. Jaka's cantina has been here for almost ten years now, ever since he gave up the smuggling game. Every wall is covered in graffiti: farmers, scoundrels, soldiers and spacers coming and going, scratching their names into the wall, and the names of their loved ones, and their ships.

Trin looks around for her own name, etched into the stone about four years ago, and for a moment she's not sure if she remembered it right—but there it is, just between the sign for the daily specials and an advertisement for_ Happy Bantha_ brand engine grease:

_Trin Ai Kari / Seven Seeds_

She carved it in there, proudly, the day he'd finally offered to sell her the ship. He'd kept the old girl in storage for years and she needed a thorough service and a good dusting, but Trin thought she was perfect; she'd paid him the creds without a second thought, shouted a round for everyone in the cantina, and then grabbed a bar stool to find an empty spot on the wall to make her claim. Later she'd gone straight to the cockpit and sat in the pilot's chair, staring out into the starry night, until she finally fell asleep there.

She'll tell anyone who asks that it's right up there as one of the best days of her life, maybe the happiest. Being here is like a little tiny moment of being at home.

Jaka follows her gaze. "There'll be room for more names in the new place, little flame," he says. "Yours too, I hope."

"Are you kidding? I'm planning to be first in line."

There's not much she can do with the split in his horn except to seal it off with a gel and wind some fabric around it. In the cut, the kolto's well on its way to doing its work, and she applies a new layer of spraybandage, neatly this time. "If you leave this on for a day you should only have a small scar. But you should go see a real sawbones."

"Oh, I think I'll live." He hops off the bench. "Maybe it will be a handsome scar, hm?"

"Always finding the bright spot, aren't you?"

"It's a gift."

She washes her hands and puts the rest of the first aid kit back where she found it, and tries not to think about bursting into tears. "Listen," she says, "give me a call when you're ready to move; don't pay some surface transport goon. You could fit this kitchen of yours in the cargo hold five times over."

"Oh, don't I know it," he grins. "You've made yourself a deal, then. Now, come and drink the rest of this tea with me, and let's talk about something else. I want to hear what you've been up to with my girl."

#

She promised that she wouldn't do anything stupid, but she didn't promise that she wouldn't do _anything._

Seems like the Imperials favour a different cantina on the other side of town, and that's where Trin finds the sergeant, enjoying a little off-duty time. She pulls up a stool alongside him, and makes that point-and-two-fingers signal to the bartender that means, just about anywhere in the galaxy, to bring a couple more of whatever that guy's having.

Twill drags his eyes away from the holo in the centre of the room and looks instead at her, part bemusement, part scorn. "Is there something you want?" he drawls.

"Just a chat," Trin says, using her most disarming smile, feeling her trigger finger itch.

"About what?"

"Your little _offer _to Jaka Xoth."

"Oh, yes. I remember you now." The only light on his face is the unflattering glow from the holo, turning his eyes almost black.

"Good."

The bartender places the drinks in front of them.

"How… kind of you," the Imperial says, casting a glance at the glass.

"Smells like something off the top shelf, huh. Real nice. Those 'inspections' you've been running must pay well."

He takes a swallow of the drink. "Something like that."

"Two thousand creds, wasn't it?"

He nods.

"Here's four," she tells him, sliding a small stack of chips in front of him.

The sergeant looks at her like she's suddenly grown another head. "What?"

"Four."

"Why?"

"Cause I'm guessing that credits work better than just asking you nicely."

He looks carefully at each chip, before slipping them into his breast pocket. "Your friend didn't seem so keen to play along last night."

"Well, I wonder why that is? Pretty easy to be a tough guy when there's four, five, against one, isn't it?" Trin leans in close, real close. He's kind of drunk, and unarmed, and his pupils blow out in a moment of panic, and for a second she toys with the idea of punching him in the gut.

_But you promised not to do anything stupid_, she reminds herself.

"I wouldn't like to think that my little investment here has gone to waste," she says instead. "So what you're going to do tonight when you go see him is to tell him that everything seems to be in order."

"Of course," he breathes, glancing down in the direction of her left hand—the one she's resting on her blaster.

"And then I don't want to hear about you hassling him again. 'Cause the next time you see me won't be with your pals around."

"Right."

"Great," she grins, and hops off her bar stool. "I'm real glad we had this chat."

She leaves him with his untouched drink. The smell turns her stomach, anyway.

#

It only takes Jaka a few weeks to find a new place in Anchorhead. It's a skinny two storey place, jammed between a tattooist and some abandoned company's offices, and in his mail to her about it he described it as "kind of a dive, but I love it." Trin comes straight back, as promised; she hasn't heard anything about their Imperial friend, but it seems prudent to pack up and get out as fast as they can.

Now, the cantina is almost empty—Jaka's service droids already packed away anything that isn't bolted to the wall or the floor stacked carefully in Seven Seeds' cargo hold. All that's left now is one obstinate mouse droid doing laps of the kitchen and refusing to obey commands to leave, and Jaka Xoth himself, pushing a broom across the floor one last time. The place seems positively cavernous with nothing in it, and cold.

Trin idly brushes some dust off the bar, not that it matters any. "We should get going soon."

He sighs. "Right." He takes one last swat at the mouse droid. "Are you coming or not?"

It chirps back.

"Fine."

He locks the door with absolutely no ceremony whatsoever, and they make their way to the spaceport in silence. The suns are two, maybe two and a half hours from rising, and hardly anyone else is out and about on the familiar walk to the spaceport; since it's still dark, the _Seven Seeds_ is lit up by the hangar bay's night operation lights, and Jaka breaks into a big grin when he sees her. "Look at her," he grins. "She looks great."

"Thanks," she says, with pride.

"C'mon, little flame. I can't wait to see what you've done inside," he says, running up the boarding ramp.

She lets him fly it, for old time's sake, and as the freighter's landing struts leave the dirt Trin looks down at Mos Ila and thinks of her name in that wall, and wonders if she'll ever have the chance to pay the Empire back.

* * *

If you're wondering about the language stuff Jaka and Trin were using, have a google for "Zabrak dictionary" and see what the SWG RP-ers of yore came up with.


	6. Motivation (There's Worse Things)

This part of starrypawz' 30 part challenge is about motivation and why your character does what they do. I guess the part about morals is kind of connected to her motivation, which is why this part follows on from that.

To Eleneri, Laryn, and clickety, thanks again for your reviews, which are always greatly appreciated. :D

* * *

**6. Motivation**

Risha doesn't actually think she's ever woken up with a hangover, not even once in her life. Not Risha, always so careful about letting her guard down, so mindful.

Recollections of last night come back to her in chunks: laughing at the truly horrendous music when they first got to the cantina, talking with some of the more charming patrons, dancing to the band (really, Risha?), Trin whooping in delight and hugging some stranger as a hundred-credit bet on a far-off game of smashball paid out.

And then those two ganglanders, and the fight…

_Oh yeah. That._

And the argument they had with the droid, and standing around in the cold Coruscant night air while poor Corso dropped whatever it was he was doing and came to get them. And then falling asleep in the cab, and then stumbling off to her bunk.

No, that doesn't seem like a careful, responsible Risha at all. It was a drunk and tired Risha, instead, who'd fallen asleep fully clothed with pins still in her hair.

But despite how her head feels right now, it's still probably the most fun she's had on a night out in… well, _months_, actually.

She grabs a change of clothes and autopilots her way through a few minutes under the hottest water she can coax from the shower—stars, does that feel better—and carefully reties her hair in a firm, almost severe bun. In the mirror, she takes a close look at the whites of her eyes. _Almost passable._

On her way to the galley she almost bumps into Riggs, with his arms full of pieces of armour, heading the other way. "Morning," he smiles, sidestepping to avoid running into her. "How are ya?"

"I'm okay, actually."

"You sure about that?" He makes a show of leaning down and looking carefully in her eyes, and laughs when she swats him away. "Okay, _okay_, I'm just kidding. Looks like you're doing better than the captain this morning, anyway."

"Oh?"

"I _heard_ that, Riggs," comes Trin's sharp comment from inside the galley, and Corso winks at Risha before heading off to the cargo bay.

Trin herself is leaning against the galley's far wall, staring at the caf machine, her green eyes hooded and ringed with purple circles, her hair tousled from sleep, and a vaguely pained expression on her face. "It's just warming up," she says by way of greeting, gesturing to the machine. "You want one?"

"Sure."

"Coming right up," Trin says, throwing another handful of beans into the grinder.

Back when she first came aboard the ship, Risha was fascinated by the caf machine. It's one of those old-fashioned things where you need to grind whole beans first, load them to a compression unit, and have the machine push through some pressurised water at exactly the right temperature—extremely hot—to yield a drink. Most other ships, if they have a caf machine at all, have a much more simplified setup involving powdered mix. Skavak couldn't figure it out, so of course he hated it. Trin swears up and down that it's the single best ever way to prepare it, and she operates the grinder with a well-practiced hand.

Risha notices the marks on Trin's knuckles, then, and her hungover brain suddenly pops up a memory of her smacking the Twi'lek gangster in the jaw, fist meeting chin with a satisfyingly meaty whack. "How's your hand?"

"Pretty sore." Trin holds out her bruised knuckles for inspection. "What do you think?"

"Looks painful."

"It was worth it." She flexes her fingers a few times and glances up at Risha, seemingly noticing her for the first time. "You know, I'm pretty sure you had more to drink than me last night. How do you manage to look so perfect the morning after?"

"Call it a talent," she tells her.

"That is completely unfair, you know." Trin scoops the ground beans into the compressor and presses them in gently. They smell divine. The machine begins its heating cycle with a loud thump and a whirr.

"So," Risha says, "aren't you worried people are going to talk?"

"Talk? I don't think a couple of drunk spacers getting thrown out of a cantina is the biggest news around."

"What about the version where an increasingly high-profile smuggler turned Republic privateer makes enemies in the famous Exchange?"

Trin grins, and twirls a handle on the machine; caf begins to trickle out into two small cups, thick and fragrant. "Yeah, and don't forget about the rebel Queen of Dubrillion. Sure is a whole lot more exciting than bruised knuckles and a hangover."

"The kind of exciting that might attract some attention in the underworld. Coruscant isn't some backwater where no one knows your face."

"Yeah? Well, I guess there's worse things than having a rep for beating up scum."

She hands over a little cup, then, and Risha sips at it cautiously—it's just the right side of hot, and while it's definitely caf, it's nothing like the harsh instant powdered stuff, and there's a hint of something that tastes like... like...

_...Are those berries?_

"When all this is over," Trin continues, "I just want to be able to say I did some right things, you know what I mean? I didn't stand by."

"Yeah." Risha looks down into the swirled brown liquid in her hands and thinks about her planet, and then about her father, and his disappointment that she had not yet made a throne for herself, criminal or otherwise. "Yeah, I get you."

"Hey, speaking of standing by, Darmas Pollaran's been sitting around on the holo for the last thirty minutes." Trin downs her cup in two quick swallows and ruffles a hand through her hair. "Been making him wait till I felt more alive. Guess I should go see what he wants, huh."

_He won't like that,_ Risha thinks, but her friend seems to have the knack of being able to tickle the man under the chin somewhat. Seems like their little Coruscanti vacation is about to be over, either way. She takes another mouthful of her caf and wonders whether there's something to the machine after all.


	7. Childhood (Voyager)

Well, work sure has been beating the crap out of me these last couple of months, and I have been really struggling to generate actual words on actual paper. This next instalment of starrypawz' 30 part challenge is about childhood, which I guess I've interpreted very literally for a damn change. Thanks heaps to **noxpirata, clicketykeys, Boris Yeltsin, Laryn Chilbreeze, and Eleneri** for your much appreciated reviews, and to any other anonymous readers who might have enjoyed it so far.

As usual: this is a piece of fan fiction, and I certainly hope you all realise I don't own any part of Star Wars. If I did, Leia would have given Chewie a medal at the end of A New Hope, too. Seriously, George, what's the deal with that?

###

The sound of sirens.

Someone outside, shouting in Huttese.

The piercing squeal of a girl from somewhere down the street.

Every child of the colony knew what the sirens meant, even the littlest ones; for years they all lived with this awful routine. Trin was out of bed and halfway through pulling on her boots by the time her father made it upstairs to check on her. His voice was quiet and reassuring as he helped her pull on her coat. He grabbed the little backpack and bedroll from behind her door, the one they always kept packed and ready for this very reason. "You okay, little one?" he said.

"It's okay," she said.

"That's my girl," he told her.

He took her downstairs, where her mother was pulling on her armoured sergeant's jacket, grabbing her blaster rifle. "Be sure to listen to your teachers," she said, slinging the blaster over her shoulder. "Try to be good."

"I will."

"I love you both," she added, and kissed both of them—Trin on the forehead, Father on his mouth. "Go on, now."

Outside, Trin climbed onto onto the back of her father's speeder bike and looked up at the sky, lit a bright orange by searchlights. She wrapped her arms around his waist when he jumped on, and he gunned the engine till it whined hot and high-pitched. Her mother was already speeding away on her own bike, heading in the direction of the centre of the settlement.

She clung tight to her father as they rode to the school, where the civil defence shelter was; it was a familiar trip, barely a few hundred metres away, but with the sirens becoming ever more insistent in the air, the ride still felt like it took an eternity. When they got there he lifted her up, just like when she was still a tiny little girl, and carried her all the way to the door, not putting her down until they were right in front of it.

"Be brave," he told her, kneeling to meet her eyes. He kissed her once more, on the cheek this time, and she ran towards the open door, while the low, insistent _whine-thump-thump_ of anti-aircraft fire started to fill the air—

###

—Trin wakes with a start, her hands bunched in her bedsheets, a scream ready to fly from the back of her throat. She holds her breath in the dark and listens for the sound of _Seven Seeds_' hyperdrive, a steady, quiet signal that everything's okay, and she breathes out with relief. It's okay, and it's going to stay that way just as long as her freighter's still flying.

The little red-figured chrono above the bed tells her that there's five hours to go until they drop out of hyperspace, but sleep just doesn't seem appealing anymore. She swings her legs over the edge of the bed and makes her way out of her quarters, down towards the galley to pour herself some water. Her legs take her on autopilot to the cockpit, to melt into the captain's chair and stare at the endless peeling streaks of hyperspace, to let them wash away the last few lingering parts of her dream.

She likes how the ship's floor feels under her bare feet, solid and cold, and kind of uneven from years of being scuffed and scraped and re-polished. It's been awhile since she's had the dream—a few weeks, maybe four? It never fails to unsettle her, every time. She takes a long swallow of cold water and closes her eyes, trying to concentrate on anything else, feeling the ship's tiny, gentle vibrations—there, right in the soles of her feet, quiet and reassuring…

"You okay?"

She jumps and spins the captain's chair around. It's Corso, leaning in, one hand on the cockpit doorway. "Sorry," he grins. "I didn't mean to sneak up on you."

Trin's first, somewhat irrational thought is that she's suddenly very, very relieved that she wore something relatively decent to bed. "I didn't think anyone else was awake."

"Me either. I just woke up." He looks at her curiously. "So, _are_ you okay?"

She opens her mouth to say _sure thing, Corso,_ to brush it off, because it's easier just to make out like nothing's wrong. But ever since this whole crazy adventure started, she's been feeling less and less like she ought to keep things to herself.

And maybe… maybe her farmboy friend here is kinda beginning to get under her skin.

"Do you ever dream about your parents?" she says, instead.

A moment of hurt crosses his face. "'Course I do, captain. All the time."

"I keep having this… dream about mine."

Corso comes inside and settles himself into an easy lean against a bulkhead, folding his arms in front of him. He has his hair down, out of its tie, and it falls around his face and onto his shoulders in a mess. It makes him look younger somehow, less rough around the edges. "You've never really said much about your family."

"I guess I haven't."

"Well, you could talk about it. I mean, if you wanted to. I always wish I had someone to talk to about it whenever I have a dream like that." He looks down at his hands. "Except I don't want to be nosy, so if you don't want to—"

"It's okay," she says. "I, um, I think I'd actually like to talk about it."

###

The all-clear siren sounded just after dawn, and this time, somehow, Trin knew something was wrong.

She knew from the moment she opened her eyes, a kind of cold knot in the pit of her stomach.

She knew, when she saw her teacher Sul-Tera, one of the shelter's wardens, quietly answering a holocall. She knew what it meant when he took a sideways glance at her, while he spoke to the person on the other line.

The colony was still so small that every one of the children spending the night in these tiny shelters had a parent, maybe two, who'd been out there all night—holding a blaster, fighting fires, caring for the wounded, they all had to do their part—and they all dreaded the calls that came after the fighting was done. Trin's mother was a soldier, her father a medic, always the first to go to the fighting and the last to leave. She'd always known in the back of her mind that it could so easily be a call about either one of them, though she never truly understood.

But then this time, she _knew_.

Sul-Tera ended the call and walked over to her (oh, she _knew_), his expression tight, the other children staring. "Trin," he said quietly, kneeling beside her, and even though she'd been expecting this she dropped the blanket she'd been trying to fold. "One of the soldiers is going to come and take you to the hospital."

She took one shaky breath. "Where are my parents?"

"Your father's at the hospital," he said. "He's been hurt, but he's going to be okay. But your mother…"

"No," she said, the single word raw and hard in her throat. She wanted so much to be brave like she promised, but Sul-Tera gathered her up in strong arms and she sobbed into his shoulder while he told her how very sorry he was.

###

When Bes Kari finished his studies he could have gone anywhere in the galaxy: to the Core, perhaps, or to any of the other old colony worlds, maybe even Iridonia itself.

But it was a tiny, obscure colony named Ta Mireth on mid-rim Dorajan that called to him, not even twenty years old, home to a few thousand Zabrak settlers. He craved something completely different to his very traditional, very old settlement, something clean and new and unfettered by centuries of tradition. In the midwinter, he said his farewells to his clan on Iridia and made his first trip outside the sector.

He hadn't been on Dorajan for long before he met a girl, Ko Lar, a soldier from the colony's tiny garrison. She would visit each week to collect medpacs and other supplies for her squad, and Bes would eagerly wait for her, every time, just to talk with her for a few minutes. She was warm and uncomplicated, and loved wordplay, and blasters, and old speeders, and he was completely taken with her from the very first time he saw her.

And then he started to visit the little bar that the garrison's soldiers favoured, so that he could talk with her some more, and finally one night with the help of some liquid courage he leaned forward and kissed her.

Ko Lar just laughed and asked what took him so long.

They ran headlong into a bonding, to absolutely no one's surprise, although they spent a few years on their own before they thought about children. When they started thinking it was time, they went out camping one night in the forest, to lie back in the grass and look to the stars and think it over. Ko Lar never really put a lot of stock in dreams and visions, but that night she dreamed of a girl with Bes' deep brown skin and her own green eyes. She told him about it the next morning, and she told him that she'd decided that if they were to have a girl, they would call her Trin, after a character from folklore whose name meant _voyager_.

###

Trin's memories of the days after the raid have always been a blur.

Being taken to the hospital to see her father, watching him sleep while some kind of kolto device moved like a spider across the ruined skin of his chest and arms.

Outside, the rubble, the scorch marks from blasters. The smell of burnt trees, burnt buildings, burnt _everything, _even after it rained.

The hospital, so full of the wounded and the grieving; knowing they were not the only ones but still feeling so horribly alone.

The funeral, singing the songs that would carry her mother to the afterlife.

The nights she spent curled up in a chair instead of in her bed, trying to stay awake all night because she was afraid of what might happen when she fell asleep.

Their friends who came to visit their home, whispering quietly how sorry they were, how loved her mother was, what an honour she brought to her family's name.

The awful, unfamiliar sound of her father crying, in the moments when he thought she couldn't hear.

###

There were no more raids that year, but Bes knew, like everyone knew, that it was only going to be a matter of time before they would be back. They were far from any other settlements in the sector, and would always be an easy target for the pirates and criminals who had begun to move so freely through the sector.

There had been four years of raids, mostly small groups, but the most recent ones had been the worst that anyone could remember. The colonists soon found themselves torn between staying on in defiance—so typically Zabrak—or leaving to start over. A few dozen families had already left, young families like his.

He tried to imagine what it would be like for his daughter to grow up this way. He was not even sure whether Trin could even remember what it had been like before the raids began. He had already given ten years of his life to this place, lost Ko Lar to this place. It was a very easy decision to make.

The next morning, he holoed the freighter captain who made the hospital's regular deliveries, and booked a journey back to his home on Iridia.

###

Trin had been quiet, maybe even contemplative, in the days before they left home, but as soon as they boarded the ship to Iridia she peppered her father with questions for what seemed like every waking minute of the voyage.

"Does it rain on Iridia, father?"

"Why is hyperspace blue?"

"Why does that droid only speak Basic?"

"Will I still have to go to school?"

He welcomed the questions, truth be told, as persistent and small as they were. Trin's natural outgoing manner had become somewhat subdued in the months that followed Ko Lar's death, but there must have been something about space travel that unlocked a flood of curiosity in the girl. The ship's captain, a Mirialan woman, was particularly gracious in the face of her youngest passenger's repeated questions.

"Where did the hyperlanes come from?"

"Can we still go fishing on Iridia?"

"Why don't Mirialan have horns, father?"

"Can't we have our own starship one day?"

He made sure to wake her just before the ship left hyperspace, so that she didn't miss out. The captain let her stand on the bridge and watch while she piloted the little freighter into Iridia's atmosphere. "It's so _yellow_," Trin whispered, leaning close enough to the transparisteel that her breath made a tiny cloud on its surface.

"I got a feeling you have yourself a little spacer in the making here, doctor," the captain said, as she brought the ship in to land.

###

"Do you miss Dorajan?" Corso asks.

"I guess I did at first. But honestly, I barely remember it anymore. Iridia was more like home after that." Trin stretches and yawns. "It's gone now, anyway. I guess the pirates won in the end. I couldn't go back and visit even if I wanted."

"That's a real shame," he says.

"It really is." Trin ruffles her fingers through her hair, making it stick out in black clumps. "I think I need a caf, now."

"Do you feel better?" Corso asks. "Talking about it, I mean."

She has to think about it for a second.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do."


	8. Downtime (Sweet)

And we're back! The next part of starrypawz' 30 day prompts would normally be a story about family, but since teh last instalment was about Trin's childhood, I'm going to mix up the order here so I can save that for later (and also cause I got a plan, heh heh heh). So instead, this prompt is the one about downtime. It's also been heavily influenced by one of those fluffy _Imagine Your OTP_ prompts about inappropriate times to suck on a lollipop.

Oh yeah. It's going there. Although maybe not in the way you were thinking.

Thanks heaps to the lovely and constant noxpirata, Eleneri, and Laryn Chillbreeze for your wonderful recent reviews, and to everyone who's been reading along so far. Thanks especially if you still happen to be reading this after some slow going. I think when I started this I thought drabbles were going to be enough, but these guys just keep on asking for more words.

This is a work of fan fiction, yada yada. I don't own Star Wars, but since they obviously don't want to do anything with _Star Wars_ _1313_ anymore, can we have it instead? Please?

#

Corso has always found Carrick Station's cantina to be mildly unsettling.

Maybe it's the ever-rotating collection of hustlers, mercs, and bored troops, all just passing through.

Maybe it's the incessant music grinding away at any hour of day or night, a repetitive soundtrack for the bored, blank-faced dancers dotted around the cantina on well-worn podiums.

Maybe it's because every time they come in here, some drama or another seems to rear its head and pull them out into some crazy adventure.

It's not that he doesn't appreciate a bit of downtime, it's just, well, not his first choice to spend the day. It's noisy, and kind of dirty, and he misses just spending time planetside; it feels like forever since he's seen sunshine, _any_ sunshine, had the wind on his face.

Instead, he's been spending most of the afternoon getting vaguely buzzed on Alderaanian beer — at least that's _something_ they get right here — sitting at the seven-card comet table, playing doubles with Bowdaar and anyone else who's stopped by their table. It's been kind of fun having the big guy playing with him instead of against him for a change. He's also been getting real good at the card tricks, Corso notices; it's not every day you see a Wookiee doing shuffle flourishes like a street magician. Right now, he's grabbing the cards in one big hand and letting them flutter back into his other in a long, quick stream, earning an admiring glance from a couple of young Twi'lek guys at the nearby table. Corso lets his attention wander around the big, noisy bar, till he finds what he's looking for.

It's the captain (_it's always the captain_, he thinks), perched on a stool at the end of the bar. She's dressed differently today, wearing a soft, comfortable-looking green leatheris jacket over a pale blue shirt, and a set of tiny, sparkling charms on the row of horns that crosses her forehead. Maybe even a little more makeup around her eyes; he can't tell. She's been spending most of the afternoon deep in conversation with some trader she knows, a big human man with a pretty forbidding set of cybernetics covering his right eye, and a gravelly voice to match, an incongruous glass of Juma Juice in his hand. Beside him, Trin looks tiny, almost girlish by comparison. He's laughing at something she's saying; she's toying with the collar of her jacket and laughing back in response, eyes sparkling, maybe a little tipsy herself.

It gets under his skin, a little. It shouldn't, because he's promised himself that he wouldn't let it, because he's always known that flirting is just a thing she does, and that it doesn't really mean anything.

Doesn't seem to make it any easier for the knowing, though.

She spots him looking, then, and flashes him a quick, broad smile. She points the two of them out to her trader friend, and he grins, making his way over. "Now, would you look at that? I haven't played seven-card comet in _years,_" he tells Trin, once he's close enough to see the table.

"Well," she replies, "you won't want to stake too much against these two. They've been practicing against each other for weeks now. Bowdaar, Corso Riggs, from my crew. This is Denno Nuro. He's got a good supply of some of those materials you two have been looking for."

"Pleased to help out." He offers them both a gloved hand; his handshake is surprisingly gentle for someone so imposing. "You two looking for someone to deal in? What are the stakes?"

"Just small change here." Corso swirls his near-empty glass. "Let's start with five creds to buy in, five more to start the betting, and the loser of this hand buys next drinks."

"Sounds fine to me," Nuro grins, and settles his considerable frame onto a stool.

«You deal first,» says Bowdaar, pushing the cards over to their new friend with an enormous mitt.

"My pleasure." Nuro picks up the deck and gives them a shuffle of his own — nothing showmanlike, but with a practiced hand, and very thorough. Corso's learned never to believe anyone who says they haven't played a particular game for awhile, and he notices that the trader doesn't seem to have any trouble remembering where to deal each section. Bowdaar gives Corso a sidelong look: _keep an eye on this one._

As for Trin — he wonders whether he might have been right about her being a little drunk, herself. With one hand she holds onto the remains of what looks like a cocktail, garnished with a piece of round, pink candy on the end of a little stick, and with her other hand she very deliberately and carefully checks each of her cards, peeling up their corners one by one. He watches her bite her bottom lip in thought and feels a little flutter of something in his heart, imagining her kiss, the feel of her teeth grazing his own lips…

_Not now, you idiot._

He looks back at the cards he's been dealt, and then what's face up at the sectors on the board: the two nines he has in his hand ought to be pretty handy for making threes of a kind, if more nines turn up, and a few more high cards in his hand ought to combine nicely with anything else that'll be revealed in the six sectors. Corso throws in five for the pot and another five for the comet's tail and the others quickly follow.

"So what kind of materials do you deal with, Nuro?" he asks, rearranging his seven cards.

"Oh, whatever drops into our hands, mostly alloys, sometimes textiles. I run six salvage teams. Your captain here says you've been looking for fibermesh; turns out we had a good run with it last week."

«Now, that's what I've been waiting to hear,» Bowdaar says appreciatively.

"It's been hard to come by the usual way, when all the good supplies are being snapped up by the militaries," Trin adds.

"They try to get to the salvage first," Nuro says, rearranging the cards in his hand. "You know, just last week, we were doing a sweep through an asteroid belt near the Carida system, and had to cut early when a couple of Empire frigates stopped by. They're getting quick. But I'm still quicker," he says with a wide, disarming grin. "Anyway, let's bet." He flips over the first set of cards from the Star sector, and the round begins in earnest.

The thing with seven-card comet that makes it so intriguing — and maddening — is that the betting rounds can run for ages, if you let them. Real pro players like to use that frustration to their benefit and drag out the games as long as they can, but he and Bowdaar both favour the approach where they raise early, quick, and often to keep the hands short and the pot high — especially someplace like here, where you don't want to put the locals off side. They've played against each other onboard the _Seeds _so often, and for so long, that they seem to be able to read each other's expressions and tells as clear as a holo. Corso's pretty sure that the Wookiee is _very_ confident about what he's got there in his hand. It's hard to explain how he knows, but he just _knows_ — Corso's been on the receiving end of that attitude enough times to know when the big guy's getting ready to lay down some real beaters of hands.

Denno Nuro he's not so sure about; he has a restless expression, and he might be able to hide some of his thoughts behind those cybernetics of his, but he's also a little flushed around the cheeks, a little too chatty — could be nerves from playing against strangers, a little too much to drink, maybe just how he is all the time? But he seems genuinely happy to be there, at least. He doesn't think the captain would have chosen to make a deal with the type of person who cheats at cards, anyway.

And the captain herself — okay, she's always hard to read at the card table, but Corso likes to think that he's been getting a little better at it lately. She's not betting too adventurously, but she's staying on board, swirling that little piece of candy around and around in the rest of her drink, surprisingly tight-lipped, for a change. She has this tell sometimes, where she bounces her heel on the floor, like she's tapping along to a song only she can hear. When she does it out in the real world, off the table, it's because she's impatient about something. She's doing it now, and he can't figure out whether she's actually bothered by something, or whether she's just enjoying the music that's pulsing through the cantina, or something else. She picks up the candy garnish for a second and then puts it back in her glass, turning the liquid inside the other direction, stirring, stirring.

She told him once that it was bad luck to touch the sides of your glass when you stir it. He doesn't believe in luck and he's pretty sure she doesn't really believe it either, but these spacer types all seem to swear by their superstitions even when they're perfectly silly.

Then, she glances back at him quickly from under those dark lashes of hers and lifts the corner of her mouth in a barely perceptible smile. _Caught you looking. _He smiles right back at her, before he even realises that he's done it; suddenly he wonders whether she's got him figured, if there's some telltale quirk or expression she's figured out that he doesn't know he's been doing.

"Next bets," Nuro says, flipping over the second set of cards, this time from the Safe Harbour sector. There's already another one of those nines Corso was looking for, and the Commander of Staves, which should make for some pretty decent hands for everyone. Bowdaar is first to bite and goes in hard with ten, his expression just as casual as you like.

"Big bet," Nuro says.

«Big enough to make you fold?» the Wookiee replies, waving his cards gently. «Cause I'm pretty thirsty.»

"Don't let him talk you out of it, Denno," Trin laughs. "Just for that I'll raise ten."

_Twenty? Come on. _Her hand can't be that good. She's been keeping up, sure, but she'd been betting too conservatively on the last sector for this to be a convincing gamble. "I think we can do better than that," he says, throwing in thirty.

"_Really, _Corso?" Trin asks, drawing out the syllables, lingering on them. "You must be holding onto something pretty special there."

"You'll see," he tells her.

Nuro beams that big grin he has, and matches Corso's bet right away, not even a second's hesitation. "I'm game."

Bowdaar matches, of course, making a _chuf_ of approval as he tosses in the tokens.

And Trin? She stares at her cards, and back to the table, then back to her cards, like she's trying to work out whether to match, or if another raise is worth it or not.

"Hmm."

She picks up the piece of candy, then, and very thoughtfully she pops it into her mouth, the glossy pink confection disappearing between her lips, and Corso's thoughts pull up hard on the brake and go skidding off into a _completely_ different direction —

And that's when he drops his cards, all seven of them scattering face-up in front of him, and his heart sinks as he realises what he's done. House rules at Carrick, like most cantinas, say that dropping your cards means an instant fold — no matter how close you are to the end of a game, no matter how good the friends you're playing with, no exceptions. Too many fights break out over rule interpretation, otherwise.

"So, I guess … drinks are on me," he says.

"Hey, you really did have a good hand there," Trin says, checking out his cards. "Shame."

"Yeah, it is," he sighs, picking up a handful of his credit chips and heading to the bar.

"What can I get for you," says a bartender droid, his perfectly modulated tones completely at odds with Corso's thoughts right now.

"A Juma juice, two Alderaanian ales, and … what's the name of that drink the lady over here had before?" he says, gesturing to the table.

"It is called _Before the Storm,_ and contains citrus flavour concentrate, ginger, dry Rhuvian fizz, and crushed ice, garnished with a honey-melon flavoured pop."

"One of those, too."

"Certainly."

The droid goes off to do his work, and Corso gently taps a credit chip on the countertop and watches him mix the ingredients for Trin's drink: he guesses it'll taste spicy, and a little acidic, and a little sparkly. The sweet garnish must help cut some of the bite.

Of course that's what she's drinking; he can't think of anything more appropriate for his captain.

_You really are an idiot,_ he tells himself.

Bowdaar wanders up to the bar and rests two big forearms on the counter top. «I saw that,» he says.

"Saw what?"

The Wookiee leans forward and gives him a look. «You know what,» he says, as quietly as he can manage.

Corso feels his cheeks warm, and he looks down at his hands on the countertop. "Is it really that obvious?"

Bowdaar huffs. «I don't know why you haven't just _done_ _something_ about it.»

"Me either," he says. "And—and I want to, I just…"

But he struggles to find the words to finish the sentence. The droid comes back with a tray of drinks, and Bowdaar takes it. «You're hopeless. Here, I'll take this back.»

_I just don't know what to do._ That's what he should have said.

Oh, he knows _what_ people do, what they say, how they say it. It's not even like he's a stranger to flings with girls — light, casual things, the kinds of encounters where there's not a lot of room for complexity or ambiguity, where you don't make plans to take it any further than a back room in some cantina.

Somebody like the captain, though… growing up on Ord Mantell, he thinks, has left him woefully unprepared for this. With his fiancée, there'd been so many traditions and rules about how to court a girl that it seemed as though he already knew the whole thing by heart.

Out here, out in the rest of the galaxy, he kicks himself every time he catches himself blurting something about _ladies_. He does it without even thinking, instinct drilled into him from his upbringing, and he can't always catch it before it flies out of his mouth, and one of his crewmates _tsks_ or tells him to pull his head in.

No, the thing he struggles with is how to really tell her how he feels, to bare that part of him to her, without screwing it up or saying something stupid.

He looks up at the droid, now waiting patiently for payment. "How much?"

"Forty credits."

He gives the droid forty-five. "Say, do you have any more of those … pop things?"

"The garnish? Of course."

"I'll take some of those, too."

#

"Carrick control, this is _Seven Seeds_, requesting your next departure clearance."

"Stand by."

Trin yawns, covering her mouth with the back of one hand, plucking off the little charms she wears on her forehead with the other.

"Ready when you are, _Seven Seeds._"

"Struts are coming up now. Have a real nice day."

Trin cuts the comm and gently guides the ship out of the hangar bay with a well-practiced hand. They'll rendezvous with Denno Nuro's salvage scows back in the Taris system and pick up some of that fibermesh he's got, less than a day's hyperspace travel away. Once they're well clear of the station she taps the controls that will start the hyperspace jump and leans back, letting out a heavy sigh.

"Happy to be back on board?" Corso asks her, from his favourite spot by the viewport. The readings from the hyperdrive all seem like they're normal as they spin up, and every other measurement seems typical. Weapons all look good. He likes to check it out, even when he knows Risha's going to be all over it in an instant if anything comes up less than perfect.

"Mmm," she says absently, her hands folded behind her head, her eyes closed. "Didn't think talking Denno into giving up some of his loot was going to be such hard work."

"Cocktails and cards? I wish all our hard work was so easy."

"He drove a pretty mean bargain. I hope you boys cleaned up on the tables?"

"Something like that."

The hyperdrive finishes its startupwhine and Trin's eyes flutter open just in time to watch the stars lengthen and stream out of sight, giving way to hyperspace's blue streaks. "Thanks for letting us crash your party. I think he likes you two. Shame that Risha couldn't make it aboard."

"It's hard to drag her away from that hyperdrive, huh."

She yawns, then, and rubs one of her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Y'know, I think I'm going to fall asleep if I don't get out of this chair," she says, climbing back out of it. "Going to get some shut-eye."

"Hey, before you go," he says.

"Yeah?" She turns back, one eyebrow raised.

"I've got something for you." He holds out the bundle of pops, each wrapped in its own piece of colourful flimsiplast. He'd found a piece of spare twine and tied them together, like a bouquet.

"What's this for?" she grins.

"You seemed to like them," he shrugs.

"I _love_ them." Her fingers brush his when she takes them, warm and calloused. "Did you try one?"

"No."

She picks one out from the bouquet and hands it back. "Well, you should. They're really good."

Carefully, he unwraps the pop from its wrapper and places it into his mouth, cautiously at first, then with some more enthusiasm, some surprise. He doesn't really make a habit of eating sweet things. But it's true, he thinks; it really does taste just like a honey-melon, not at all like the dense, strong sugar rush he was expecting. It reminds him of something. He can't quite place it…

Trin gives him a smile, crooked and sleepy. "I'll see you in the morning."

_Summer. _It makes him think about summer, and sunlight, and then he remembers how he'd been missing it earlier. And it seems like such a perfect moment to say something, if he can only think of how…

"Goodnight," he says instead.


	9. Choices (Instinctively)

**And to think I was originally going to try to do the 30 Day SWTOR Character Challenge prompt series with 30 drabbles in 30 days… HAHA HA, NOT LIKELY CHUM. Also, it turns out that doing work + graduate school is really rather difficult and time-consuming, hence the incredibly long delay. Many thanks to anyone who's still reading.**

**Anyway, part 26 of the challenge was about choices: ****_Everyone has to make choices. What are a few choices your character has made? What was the outcome? Did your character stick by their choice?_**** This is about a couple of different decisions from before the game and also a mother freaking ton of backstory, so it's been moved up. I'm also removing a couple previous parts to rework them and will return them shortly, all shiny and new.**

**As usual: This is a work of fan fiction, no infringement intended, yada blah dada. Hug a lawyer today.**

#

Jaka thought he was done with bailing people out of lockups. Truth be told he thought he'd seen his last of Coruscant, too. If you'd asked him about it a few days ago he'd probably have laughed and asked you what could possibly make him want to do that. That was before he found out that Zenn Jarik managed to get himself arrested, and Jaka's ship impounded. So he's left his favourite barmaid in charge of the cantina, hitched a ride with an old contact all the way to Coruscant, and now, he's leaning on the counter of an old CorSec lockup waiting for the duty sergeant to re-read every little bit of bureaucratic writing that seems to have something to do with the case.

"You're the owner of the ship?" the sergeant says, finally.

"Yes."

"And the inmate's relationship to you is…"

"An employee." Well, not exactly, but now isn't the time to split hairs. "What's the charge?"

"Falsifying the ship's manifest, possession of a traffickable quantity of a prohibited substance, refusing to assist an officer of the Customs Service." The sergeant hands him a datapad. "All the details right here. You been to deal with the ship first?"

"You better believe it."

"So now you're here to post bail?"

"Seems that way," he says.

"Fine." The officer waves over to a doorway. "Lockup's over there. Droid'll bring the inmate out. You got a ten minute limit."

"Thanks."

The sergeant grunts and turns back to his holo. Nice to see that level of dedication to your job, Jaka thinks, as he makes his way to the visitors' room and sits down at one side of a cold, metal table. He's only waiting a couple of minutes till a droid brings Jarik out — cuffed, and dressed in an especially unattractive shade of correctional facility gold, marred with dirt. His face breaks out in a huge, grateful smile as soon as he sees his visitor. "Oh, you've got no idea how happy I am to see you, buddy. You should see some of the guys they got in the lock up here, five guys to a cell. I been in six fights already…" he says, and chatters away while the droid chains his cuffs to the table.

Jaka ignores him and turns to the droid, instead. "I'm going to need a little privacy with my _friend_ here. That alright with you?"

"You may press the call switch at the doorway if you require assistance."

"_Thank_ you," he says, with exaggerated enthusiasm. He waits until the droid is long gone before turning back to the cringing human in front of him. No more nice-guy act now. He can guess from Jarik's reaction that the look on his face can't be good, so he takes a moment to stare him down just a little longer, for good measure.

"Y'know," he says finally, "when I got out of the game I thought I'd be done with dealing with two-timing _schutta_ like you."

"I don't know what you're—"

"Don't," he snaps. "When were you going to tell me you were running spice for Saruni Hannica in _my _ship?"

Jarik's expression changes to one of surprise. "You found out about that?"

He nods.

"It was just a few times, man, I didn't think it was a big deal…"

"You mean you didn't think I'd find out about it, don't you," Jaka says.

He swallows.

"She holocalled me about five minutes after you got arrested."

"Oh. You, uh, know each other…"

"We _know_ each other?" Jaka laughs. "I named my firstborn after her."

The little gears in Jarik's mind are almost audible. "…Oh."

Jaka folds his arms. "Do you know how many bribes it's going to take to get the _Stranger_ off the watchlist?"

"It won't happen again."

"Oh, you're right there. I've already changed the locking codes on the ship. Even had the detailers in to clean it out completely. Cleared out your stuff and gave it to the lost property desk at the spaceport. You can probably go pick it up once you get out of here."

"But I—" There's a long silence from the other man as it dawns on him. "What about Kerra? She had nothing to do with this, man, where's she going to go…"

"I took fifty thousand credits out of your share of the last job and put her on the next shuttle to Nar Shaddaa. Poor girl looked like she could use a holiday."

He slumps in resignation. "I guess you've dealt with everything, huh."

"Almost," he says, and walks over to the call switch. The droid is already halfway through the doorway before he's even touched it. So much for privacy.

"Will you be arranging bail for the suspect now, sir?" the droid asks.

"Sure."

Jarik makes a squeak of disbelief. "You mean—"

"Don't get too excited, _buddy_, this is coming from your share, too. And then we're through." Jaka takes the offered datapad and makes a very careful show of entering the amount. "Thirty thousand credits, wasn't it?"

"That is correct."

"Easily done," Jaka says, trying not to look too closely at Jarik's hopeful expression. And he relishes it, just for a second, and then…

"Oh, by the way," he adds. "The transaction's coming from an escrow account. It should take about three standard days. Do you see a problem with that, or…?"

The droid makes a noise that's actually a pretty good impression of a huff. "We are unable to release the prisoner until funds clear," the droid answers, and yes — there it is — Jarik's face falls.

"Huh." Jaka says. "What a shame."

"Aw, come on, Jak…"

He spreads his hands in faux-apology as the droid goes about the business of taking the prisoner back into the holding cells. "Guess you'll just have to hang in there for a few more days. See you round, buddy."

But he's sure that he won't, because Jaka has no intention of ever looking this scum in the face again. Saruni's already arranged for someone to post a very generous bounty — nothing permanent, mind you, just a little job to rough him up a little bit, send him a message. There should be at least one competent taker by the time that bail money makes its way out of escrow. It wouldn't have been Jaka's style, but Saruni's always been the unforgiving type.

#

It takes him awhile to find a cantina that he likes the look of, so when he stumbles across the Trackside he ducks into the first free booth he can find and orders up half a bottle of ambrostine. It sits just above the swoop track's finish line, its big, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the pit area, serving meals and drinks to swoop fans all day long.

Why didn't he just sell the damn ships in the first place and be done with it? Less trouble that way. Less creds, maybe, but he'd got out of the scene pretty comfortably…

Oh, but who's he kidding? He's not the only one doing it: plenty of people say they're going to leave but they'll keep a foot in the game, sitting back in semi-retirement in the comfort of some new, perfectly legitimate business while running the same old shady operations with a ship or two on the side. He'd been dreaming for years of his cantina, fell in love with it the second his feet hit sand on Tatooine. But he'd missed the stars all the same, and the special satisfaction of doing a good bit of business. And anyway, he had three ships to his name, and you don't leave perfectly good starships sitting idle.

So the _Labour in Vain_ he'd leased to his old friend and first mate Dane Fabri, taking a relatively minor cut of the earnings in exchange for his continued good company and reliable gossip whenever he happened to be in the sector, plus the occasional favour of picking up certain rare cargos or unusual liquors from time to time. Solid as durasteel. He figures Dane will make an offer to buy the ship eventually, and he knows his old friend would keep treating his girl right.

The _Seven Seeds_ he's been keeping in a dusty old underground hangar on Tatooine — mostly for sentimental reasons, cause it's his favourite, and a bit because he knows it's going to need a good deal of servicing before he'd be comfortable letting someone else run around in it.

And the _Welcome Stranger_ — now, Vesh, she'd been running that ship just fine on her own for a good few years, even after they'd finally got the divorce. Such a hopeless, pointless cause their marriage had become, but even despite all that she'd always been one of the best freighter captains he'd ever met, and she stayed on right up until it was time to start making babies with her new husband. She looked so happy that day she finally dropped the ship back off, with her belly as round as a moon, and it made his soul ache for weeks even though he didn't deserve to feel that way.

He was a little out of sorts, to be honest, seeing her like that, so maybe his head wasn't exactly in it when he'd started looking for a new captain for the _Stranger_. Jaka got to know that schutta Jarik through one of those friend of a friend things. Interesting reputation, kind of charming, in that card-counting kind of way. Jaka always had a weird feeling about him, but you don't exactly get a warm and fuzzy sense from most folks you meet in this business, so he'd tucked away his reservations, made the man a jug of Balmorran-style citrus wine and a homecooked meal, and talked him into a thirty-seventy split.

Thatlying two-faced _mint'aj._ Jaka swallows two fingers of ambrostine in one go and pours himself another right away. By the time he gets the _Stranger_ back to Tatooine he'll have wasted a week cleaning up this idiot's mess, and who knows how long it'll take him to find a new crew?

He used to be so strict with himself about trusting his gut feelings. When did he become so soft and so old?

A bookmaker's girl is working the room, holding a holoprojector in one hand and a datapad in the other. "Care to wager?" she says in the same bored tone to every booth. She's beautiful in that way that only Twi'lek girls can really pull off, kind of _too_ pretty, way out of the league of most of the creeps in this establishment. He waves her down when she stops past his table.

"What's on?"

"Class three swoops, race six."

"Let's see them."

She thumbs a control on the side of the holo and stares listlessly across the room, her vacant smile directed at no one in particular, while the race information appears: five minutes till the jump, two racers, three time trials per racer. He's a little disappointed that there's not something a bit more high-stakes to test his luck — but it _is_ Coruscant, after all, hardly the standard of racing you find further out towards the rim. The favourite is a young Twi'lek fellow with a Rendili engine under the hood of his bike, paying 2.3. The roughie's paying 6.4, riding Aratech, and when he sees her face come up on the tiny, low-quality holo he stops and has to look a couple times, because for one gut-wrenching second she looks like…

No, she can't be. There's no way it could be.

Right?

"That rider, what's her story?"

"Trin ai Kari," the bookie's girl says. "Used to be a navy pilot, dropped out or kicked out or something. She's pretty new."

That sounds like a colonist's name. "I'll put two hundred on her."

The girl raises one eyebrow — tattooed on, he notices. "Two hundred? Alright." She fiddles with the datapad, using her thumb to enter the wager. Some device on the bottom spits out a matching piece of flimsy. "Paying twelve hundred eighty for a win. No ticket, no payout. Viewing platform's through the door at the back. Good luck," she adds, this last part clearly on autopilot.

_Good luck._ Is there any more idiotic statement in the galaxy? _Good odds,_ perhaps, or _don't screw it up. _It's not like he doesn't believe in luck, but you don't get lucky by wishing for it.

#

Five minutes, forty-five seconds, seventy-eight milliseconds. That's the time to beat.

The Uscru Entertainment District's swoop track is a little over twenty-four kilometres end to end, an almost circular route winding through and around some of the less trashy areas of the popular entertainment district. Six hundred cameras — some on mobile droids, some attached to buildings — provide a continuous, high-resolution feed of every swoop race to cantinas all over the district, where punters can put bets on any of the dozens of races around the planet. Some of the local restaurants and nightclubs alongside the track count their proximity to the track as a drawcard, installing large windows to put their patrons just metres from the speeding vehicles. It isn't the biggest of Coruscant's swoop tracks, and it probably isn't the most prestigious, but if you're a young rider hoping to make a few creds as a casual, or even get picked up for a pro team, Uscru's rookie class is the place to be seen.

For a few months now, since she flunked out, Trin has been racing here just about every day — every little swerve and bump of the track now committed to memory, every drag and boost panel, every bulkhead. Four minutes into the third time trial, and she knows she's already beating her first two laps comfortably. The question now is whether she can beat Tandi Nawara's best time and seal the deal. The heads-up display on her helmet visor shows his position in the race as a ghostly image projected into her field of view, as though she were racing him in realtime; he hovers now, a couple of metres in front of her, crouched low and tight over the bike as he guides it along the inside line of the track.

Two left swerves, a right, a hairpin facing west, then three boost panels about a hundred metres apart. She bounces over all three, just as Nawara had, barely two metres behind his ghostly image — the three boosts in a row nudge her into a top speed of three hundred and ten kilometres per hour, a speed where even the tiniest mistakes can add up to entire seconds' worth of delays by the end of the lap. No time to be an idiot now. She pulls into a long, gentle curve around the southernmost part of the circuit, passing a nightclub's large windows, then a restaurant, then some dingy-looking residential towers, into the final minute.

And just ahead, about nine hundred metres ahead of her, is a drag panel, and right in front of it is the last speed boost in the course. Here comes the part she's been waiting for, her chance to pull away and get ahead.

The trick is to somehow avoid the drag panel while manoeuvring yourself onto the boost. In the most junior classes — low speed, smaller bike, lower power on the boosts — it's easy enough to just go around the dragger and still have time to steer over into the second boost panel. But at the high speeds in this class, it's too easy to either miss the thing entirely, or come in too hard, the panel's boosters shoving the bike off to the side, or even into a sickening spinout.

She's never tried it before, and she's pretty sure Nawara's counting on that. But now it's time: as she's passing the dragger she throws her bike to the right with a jolt that's hard enough to rattle her teeth and draw blood from the inside of her cheek. Hard enough, too, that she just catches the edge of the booster with the back of her bike, and it flings her forward, the split-second of extra propulsion pushing her up and out, streaking past the ghostlike shadow of Nawara's bike in her visor.

For a moment, like slow motion, Trin feels the back of her bike lift up, and she braces herself for what will surely be a spectacular blowout —

— but it never comes, and the bike levels out, and that's when she knows she's done it. She's done it. He can't touch her now; there's no way he could have made up the time with the distance that's left. Trin zips over the finish line, the holo-image of Nawara's bike trailing just behind her, and as she pulls up hard on the brake, the time flashes up:

_Lap 3 − 5.44.862_

Two tenths of a second! She leaps off the swoop bike and runs on shaking legs, down into the pit, pulling off her helmet and gloves as the track's pit crew dash past to pick up the bike. Leta, the Aratech rep, is leaning against the entrance, wearing a wide grin on her face — and so she should, since Trin has been leasing one of her bikes for the last three months, and every race on one of Leta's borrowed bikes gets Aratech a tidy fifteen percent of her winnings.

The race marshal's droid approaches to perform its post-race checks; no result is official until the riders have been cleared of any performance-enhancing cybernetics or illegal stims. "One moment please, rider," it says, scanning her retinas and reading her vitals. She puts out her hand and holds her breath for the sharp pinprick as it takes some of her blood to check out.

"Thank you," it says. "Result is normal. Congratulations, rider."

Trin breathes a sigh of relief, and the droid sends the all-clear signal to the control tower. Leta comes up to her and claps her on the shoulder so hard that Trin almost stumbles. "Now that's the kind of ride that's gonna get you noticed," the little mechanic says. "I think Tandi thought he had you for a minute."

"Oh yeah?" Trin looks over to the other side of the pit. He's there, watching the crew work on his bike. She gives him a shy wave, and he beams back at her, a big, genuine smile.

"Don't worry, he won't let you be on top for long," Leta grins.

Trin looks again at the time, now displayed on the board above the finish line, and can't help but smile as she makes her way down the race to the riders' changerooms, her legs still shaking, like walking on air. Win or lose she picks up a race payout of five hundred credits, which would've been enough to live off for a couple of weeks, pay the rent on her little Uscru apartment. But the win pays four thousand credits, and that'd go a long way towards… well, a lot of things.

She thinks about it as she steps into the shower. Maybe she can skip Coruscant for awhile, take a shuttle and go try her luck at the swoop tracks on Onderon or Ahto City where the pay and the chances are better. Or if she's going to make a serious go of the whole swoop thing, she could stay here, and put it aside for a swoop bike of her own.

_Maybe_, a little, guilty part of her says_, you should go back home for a bit, go visit your father…_

But she ignores the sad twisting feeling in her gut and scrubs the swoop track dust from her short black hair.

#

Trin nurses a Juma Juice in one hand, unlit cigarra in the other — twirling it around and around in her fingers, over and under the knuckles. Too hyper from the race to go back to her tiny apartment and try to sleep, but too tired to make a big deal of it.

"This seat taken, _ba lora_?"

She glances up from the datapad and looks at the speaker, a tall Zabrak man, dressed casually in dark pants and a jacket made of soft, scuffed, dark red leather. There's usually plenty of Zabrak around the district, but most of them are locals, and he doesn't seem like one. And you don't hear the language spoken so much on Coruscant. He gives her a lopsided smile, and for no reason in particular, Trin decides right away that she likes him.

"Go on," she tells him, gesturing at the seat.

"Thanks." He perches neatly on the stool, and then he holds out his lighter to her unlit cigarra. "You know, I just won twelve hundred credits betting on you. Guess I should come thank you personally."

"That was a brave bet." She brings the cigarra to her lips, leans in to take the light. Truthfully, she doesn't know what the odds were, never asks, hates it whenever someone on the pit even mentions them, but she was never the favourite for this race and she knows that the smart money wouldn't have been on her.

"No kidding. You should have seen that bookmaker's face." He lights a smoke of his own, taking a long drag, letting it stream out in a trickle like he's been waiting all day for the chance to light up. "Been racing long?"

"Couple of months."

"Gonna try to take it pro?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Mmm." He takes another drag on the cigarra. "You a colony girl?"

"You sure do have a lot of questions, _stranger,_" she says, giving that last word a little extra nudge.

He grins. "Right. Sorry. I'm Jaka Xoth." He takes out a small card and pushes it across the table to her.

"Trin ai Kari."

"I know," he reminds her, taking a teasing tone. "I don't think I'll forget _your_ name in a hurry."

She looks down at the card. The fine print is hard to make out in the Trackside's grimy lighting. "You're from Tatooine?"

"Yes, I—" But then a Duros waiter arrives to talk them into making an order. "Excellent. I hope you'll let me buy you a drink," Jaka says.

With twelve hundred credits in his pocket after her race she should bloody well think so. "A Juma Juice. Please," she adds.

"And a double measure of ambrostine for me. Is it too late in the evening to ask for some bar snacks?"

The Duros inclines his head. "Our kitchen is ready, every hour of the day or night."

"Excellent. Something sweet, perhaps. I'm sure you can recommend something." He hands the young waiter a credit chip; Trin doesn't catch sight of the value, but a hint of surprise flickers across the Duros' face, before he smoothly slides the chip into a pocket on the back of his datapad. He nods, and hurries back to the kitchen.

_Huh._ "You haven't eaten here before, right?" Trin asks. "Cause I think you might be setting your expectations a little high."

"Perhaps," he beams. "But I think the odds are in my favour today, _ba lora_."

That name, again. _Swoop sister. _It's kind of cute, a name you might use with an old friend or a clan-relative. On someone else it might seem overly familiar, but with him it seems, well… a little bit like being at home.

It's funny, the way you can make a snap decision about someone.

"You didn't come all the way from Tatooine just to watch the junior swoops, did you?"

"As entertaining as they are, I did not."

"So, you're here because…" she prompts.

"I have to pick up a starship."

"Oh?" She turns the flimsiplast over in her hands, spotting an address and a holofrequency noted down in small, neat print. _Jaka's Cantina,_ it says. "You do home deliveries in that thing or what?"

He laughs. "I lease my ship to a business partner, but he seems to have found himself… suddenly unavailable. And I have a cargo that still needs delivery. And you didn't tell me, was I right about the colony thing?"

"Iridia. Dorajan, before that."

"_Iridia_," he says, pronouncing it like a long-forgotten memory. "I haven't been there in, oh, five years, I think. You're a long way from home, too."

"I suppose," she says.

"I thought girls from Iridia all stayed home to become eopie farmers."

"Well, _this_ girl ran away to join the Navy."

He gives her a look.

"Okay, and then I flunked out of the Academy," she adds a little sheepishly. "Turns out military discipline isn't my strong suit."

"Ah, that I can understand," he laughs. His cigarra's almost burnt to the tip; he stubs it out and leans back in his chair. "Your friend back there—" and here he gestures at the bookmaker — "says you're a pilot, yes?"

"I'm rated for the Rendaran light assault vehicle, and the BT-7 Thunderclap corvette."

"Huh." He sits back, impressed. "And yet you're riding swoop with tickets like that."

"It pays the bills," she says. "Till something better comes along."

Jaka studies her for a second. "Such as…?"

"Well, pilot work, I guess, if the right opportunity comes along… wait a minute," she says. "Are you—"

He grins. "Why not? I have some cargo. I have to drop it and then get this old pile of bolts back to Tatooine. I could use a co-pilot, and the company."

"You barely know me."

"I barely know any of the random beings I'd pick up on a pilots-for-hire board," he says. "Besides, I have a _very_ good feeling about you. At least let me show you around the ship."

It seems crazy. Doesn't it? Is this for real?

But what would be the harm in looking?

"Your dessert." It's the Duros waiter, a tray of little, sticky pastries in his hands.

Jaka looks at her expectantly.

"Let's get that wrapped up to go," she tells the Duros fellow.

#

How wonderful it is, Jaka thinks, that the universe seems to be so good at arranging things. The ship is still in the hangar where CorSec impounded it, barely a kilometre from the swoop track.

"So this," he says, "is the _Welcome Stranger._"

Trin runs forward and over to the little freighter's undercarriage, craning her neck to take it all in, her smile wide. "Is that a TX-R turret?" she asks, pointing to the squat little turbolaser at mid-bottom.

"It is," he says. "Mark IV. One more on the top, too."

"Wow. You ever had to use 'em?"

"It's a scary galaxy out there. Pirates, you know?"

"Right," she says wonderingly, walking around the struts to check out the rear engines. "You must be able to get some serious speed out of these thrusters."

"Like you wouldn't believe."

"What hyperdrive?"

"Tykannin."

_"Nice_." If she'd seemed slightly closed-off back at the cantina, there's certainly no sign of it now. Her enthusiasm is almost childlike, and very infectious.

"How'd you pick the name?"

"Honoured is she who welcomes the stranger at her door," he recites. "It's a proverb of my clan."

"Huh. I didn't pick you for a traditionalist."

He shrugs. "Maybe sentimentalist's a better word."

"Well, she's a beautiful ship," Trin says.

"Want to see inside?"

"You bet."

They lead up the boarding ramp and Jaka taps in the new locking code to let them inside. The interior of the ship is perfectly clean, every inch — a faint smell of cleaners and solvents still in the air, from where the docking bay detail crew scrubbed Jarik's very presence from his ship. They were _very_ thorough, he notes. Well worth the creds.

Naturally, Trin goes straight for the cockpit as soon as she's inside. Jaka follows her there, and watches approvingly as she runs her hands over the instruments, taking careful note of each.

"You can sit there, if you want," he tells her, and she flashes him a quick, brilliant grin and does so, reaching over to the controls like a natural.

"How long have you had her?"

"Fifteen years."

She strokes the arm of the well-worn captain's chair. "This looks like an original."

"Can't beat a classic."

"You modded anything?"

"The turbolasers, a few _extra_ storage compartments, captain's quarters, the galley," he says.

She looks over her shoulder at him. "_Extra_ storage?"

"For _extra _discretion." Of course he means smuggling. She'd have to be a complete neophyte not to know that everyone's doing it.

She doesn't seem to have a problem with it, taking it all in stride. "Where's your cargo going?"

"A human colony on Cal-Seti. Old holos and archives, mostly. Should take about a day and a half to get there, three more to get back to Tatooine, assuming it all goes well. I'm planning to leave tomorrow morning."

"Right." She reaches out and touches the instruments again with the tips of her fingers one more time, like she's weighing something up, then spins the chair around to face him. "Maybe… we should talk about pay."

He smiles, and holds out the takeout container of pastries. "I don't believe in cutting deals without having something to eat."

#

They leave early next morning, Trin competently guiding the ship through Coruscant's ludicrous air traffic, out of orbit and into space, battling their way through the congestion to find a decent place to make a hyperspace jump. Jaka sits back in the other seat with a mug of caf in his hands and one foot up on the console. She looks just like how he'd imagined all those years ago when he held his daughters in his arms and thought about all the things he wanted to show them.

Saruni, she'd been just a year old when a Jedi had found her. It is a great honour, they said. She will be a heroine of the Republic. She will have the finest education you can have anywhere in the galaxy. She will be loved, in a manner, the way that all of the Jedi are loved. She will grow up in a family of thousands. You are special, _she_ is special; you have created a great miracle. And, so it was said, letting young Saruni go was the only right thing to do for a Force-sensitive child.

He and Vesh had been stoic at the time, proper Zabrak, but it broke both of them, nonetheless. What a strange kind of grief, to lose a child who's still alive; knowing that they're still out there in the galaxy somewhere, but you must never, ever look for her. When someone dies at least you can eventually find your way to some kind of closure. Vesh was already pregnant with their second, the girl they would call Darai, and she spent her days alternating between furiously preparing for the new baby's arrival, and staring inconsolably out into space. Jaka busied himself in work and drinking and trying not to lose his temper at every tiny annoyance to cross his path. When Darai was born they thought that they could finally move past the grief and start living like they used to, and for awhile, it kind of worked.

But it happened again, unbelievably, horribly. When they came to take her too, when still-healing wounds were torn open, that's when Jaka knew that he could never try again, never put them through that again.

It wasn't the first time that he's thought he's seen one of his girls. It's possible. Not every Force-sensitive child becomes a Jedi. He's always known that it would be highly improbable that he would ever see them again yet he's never stopped imagining what they might look like now, looking for them in the face of every young Zabrak girl he meets who could be roughly their age. He can go for weeks without dwelling on it too much, and then sometimes it'll start to drag on the back of his mind like gum on his boot heel.

That holo back at the track… he'd still wondered, even though he knows it isn't possible. As soon as he saw Trin up close he'd known right away that she couldn't have been one of them — her eyes the wrong colour, her cheekbones and jaw just not quite right. But even so, there's something instinctive that tugs at him about her, seeing her there in the pilot's chair, an expression of sheer joy on her face as she makes the jump to hyperspace.

#

**Whew. Hope to see you sooner next time. Thanks again for reading!**


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